Primary Menu

Quora and the bullshit IQ question

“IQ Testing: If it is eventually proven that the IQ gap between European Americans and African Americans is due mostly to genetics, what effect will this have on society?”

Answer by Felix Velarde:

While the answers here bubble, I hope you don’t mind if I note a couple of aspects of the thoughts thrown up by the question.

Implicit in your question is the assumption it will be proven (you used ‘will’ rather than ‘would’). Anonymous’s answer states that ‘studies say…’ but unfortunately he or she neglects to state that other studies say otherwise. In fact, the adoption tests referred to are inconclusive (see this very good Wikipedia article on the subject: Race and intelligence).

Testing each group in comparison with the other, in a closed system (your country) with a closed test (one designed around those things your country values), seems one-sided. The tests don’t include much on linguistics (Nigeria, a country twice the size of California, on its own has over 500 languages), or appreciation of beauty, or the ability to recognise signs of rain, or the understanding of the system of nature. (Perhaps, genetically, some people are more predisposed to understanding environmental factors as opposed to ‘intellectual’ factors.)

Society is already divided in America. From a Londoner’s perspective, the US is spectacularly un-integrated, racially (and I’m only using London as that’s where I’m from, I’m not saying it doesn’t have its own deep flaws in terms of how we treat our community, but those flaws are different to yours).

In answer to your question, I’m not sure how much more arrogant a white person who thinks he’s genetically superior to any given black person can be, given the evidence of the last few centuries of white superiority delusion. I suspect the sort of person who thinks that IQ matters when it comes to social division is the sort of person who wouldn’t be encouraged to take the test.